Johnny Depp's 'Pirates 4' headed for Cannes Film Festival

Among the euro-art films and other highbrow fare at the world’s biggest film showcase, the Cannes Film Festival likes to have a few popcorn-and-candy flicks to lighten the mood (and add some star-power) to that street-wide red carpet leading to its Grand Théâtre Lumière.

Captain Jack Sparrow to the rescue.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the fourth film in the franchise, will sail into the festival along the Mediterranean next month, delivering Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, and the other swashbuckling stars of the Disney movie to the Croisette in advance of its worldwide opening the following week (it starts in the U.S. on May 20). The formal announcement of Cannes’ lineup will come tomorrow from festival organizers, but other films expected to have a presence there include DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 2, and the Fox Searchlight drama The Tree of Life — the former supplying Angelina Jolie, and the latter Brad Pitt.

The Tree of Life, from director Terrence Malick, known for incredibly beautiful and thoughtful films such as Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, is also notorious for his perfectionism. The movie has been threatening to appear at the festival for two years. It opens in the U.S. on May 27, so its Cannes premiere is a safe bet this time.

Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris has already been announced as the festival’s opening night film, and Gus Van Sant’s melancholic romance Restless, about a dying girl and a boy who likes funerals, has been picked as the kick-off of the Un Certain Regard section the next night.

Wild card guess: Jolie’s Bosnian war drama, as yet untitled, could also make an appearance, if only to screen privately for international distributors.